An overdue win in hand, they’re stomped by the Jets
Plenty of red faces in Ottawa dressing room after Winnipeg lays on a 5-0 thrashing
One win in nine games WINNIPEG is already embarrassing enough.
But this loss, and the fashion in which it happened, may have been the most embarrassing of them all for the Ottawa Senators.
After breaking a seven-game winless skid with a 6-5 victory Friday night against the New York Islanders, the Senators fumbled away their one-game “winning streak” with a disgraceful 5-0 defeat to the high-flying Winnipeg Jets Sunday night at Bell MTS Place.
“That’s about the most embarrassed I’ve ever felt playing in the NHL,” said winger Mark Stone. “Definitely one that we’ve got to wash away.
“Lack of confidence. Lack of effort. Anything you want to say. It wasn’t there tonight. We have to be ready to play. We knew this team was good in the first period and they walked all over us. I think the shots were (19-3). We just had no pushback at all … It could have been 5-0 (after the first)”
The Senators were outshot and completely outplayed by the Jets, who moved their record to 9-0-1 at home in the last 10 games. Tyler Myers, Mark Scheifele, Mathieu Perreault, Patrick Laine and Blake Wheeler did the scoring as Mike Condon was pulled in favour of Craig Anderson midway through the second.
“Every guy in this room is embarrassed right now. We have to play better. It’s as simple as that,” said forward Nate Thompson. “This is a good league. It’s not going to get any easier and no one is going to feel sorry for us. We have to come to work and we have to come to play.
“I think you could definitely say we weren’t ready to play. Look at the score, look at the result and look how we played. That’s a really good hockey team, a really good hockey team, and they made us look like a mite team out there.”
No, the Senators aren’t going to win them all and the Jets are one of the NHL’s best teams right now, but they should at least give themselves a chance. They had hoped to build some confidence with the victory in Brooklyn, however, they fell apart at the seams in this one pretty quickly.
It’s hard to suggest that Winnipeg goalie Connor Hellebuyck as the Senators took a pounding by being outshot 50-20.
The Jets, ranked No. 1 in the West, are a difficult test for anybody because they’ve got a big team and they can score goals but coach Guy Boucher didn’t want the Senators to get caught up in the hype.
“Right now, they’re firing on all cylinders,” said Boucher. “They played great and we didn’t at all. It was a recipe for disaster and we’ve got to move on.”
“Our compete level wasn’t high enough.”
You need your best players to be your best players and it’s not happening with any sort of consistency for the Senators right now. This seven-game road trip could go a long way in determining whether this club makes the playoffs and this can’t happen again.
The Senators fell apart in every aspect of the game.
They allowed two power play goals in a span of 30 seconds that allowed Winnipeg to pull out to a 5-0 lead in the second. One came on a 5-on-3 that was set up after the Ottawa bench was assessed a minor penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct.
Boucher decided he’d seen enough of Condon’s act when he allowed three goals on three shots to start the second. It was Myers’ power play effort at 6:50 that chased Condon from the game. Laine’s 13th of the season at 6:20 gave the Jets a 4-0 lead and at that point, it didn’t look like there was any stopping Winnipeg.
No, it wasn’t Condon’s fault, but the Jets struck at 3:18 of the second when Wheeler fired it home from the slot to give Winnipeg a 3-0 lead. That pretty much sealed any hope the Senators might come back.
Getting off to a quick start was part of the game plan, but the Senators did just the opposite with bad penalties and a terrible effort. Not only did they trail 2-0 to the Jets on the scoreboard, they were outshot 19-3 by Winnipeg and went more than 15 minutes without a shot.
Only moments after Stone hit the post at the other end, the Jets pulled out to a 2-0 lead on the strength of Perreault’s effort. He tipped a shot from the point by Condon six minutes into the period and, at that point, the Senators had been outshot 9-2 by the Jets.
Discipline was also supposed to be key in this one, but the Senators allowed one of the NHL’s most lethal power plays to open the scoring. It looked easy for Scheifele to score his 14th when he was left all alone in the circle and fired it by Condon stick side at 2:20 after Ottawa was assessed a too many men on the ice penalty.
“They’re a good team. They’re playing really well right now,” said captain Erik Karlsson. “They scored two quick ones, and that was in our game plan not to get frustrated, and they score twice and we can’t really find any momentum.”
The Senators headed to California immediately after the game to prepare to face the Anaheim Ducks Wednesday and the Los Angeles Kings Thursday as this road trip continues.